The spring had two voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the
voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried
a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over
the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the
spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary
circumstances, to run, to throw herself on the ground by cool violet
banks to dream and wake, all flushed and trembling, and know she must
not tell that dream. But when the dusk came down and the hylas peeped
and the moist air touched her cheek, she would lose courage and her
heart beat miserably in tune with the melancholy of spring. Still, on
the whole, she was coming alive, and no one knew better than she that
life, to be life, must be also a matter of pain. Tenney was leaving her
to a great extent free. He was off now, doing his fencing, and he would
even, returning at noon or night, forget to fall into the exaggerated
limp he kept in reserve to remind her of his grievance. She had not seen
Raven for a long time now, except as he and Nan went by, always looking
at the house, once or twice halting a moment in the road, as if debating
whether they should call. And Tira, when she saw them, from her hiding
behind the curtain, would step to the door and fasten it against them.
She would not answer, she told herself, if they knocked. But they never
did knock. They went on and left her to her chosen loneliness. For an
instant she would be unreasonably hurt, and then smile at herself,
knowing it was she who had denied them.
It was an April morning when the spring so got into her blood that she
began to wish for things. They were simple things she wished for:
chiefly to feel herself active in the air and sun. She wanted to go
away, to tire herself out with motion, and she made up her mind that, if
Tenney went to the long pasture fencing, she would shut the house and
run off with the baby into the woods. The baby was heavy now, but
to-day, in her fullness of strength, his weight was nothing to her. They
might even go over to Mountain Brook by the path "'cross lots" where the
high stepping stones led to the track round the mountain. She loved the
look of the stepping stones in spring when the river swirled about them
and they dared you to cross and then jeered at you because the water
foamed and threatened. She sang a little, finishing her morning tasks,
and Tenney, coming from the barn with his axe, to start on his day's
fencing, heard her sing. Tira, when she saw him, was in such haste to be
off herself that she called to him from the window:
"Here! don't you forget your luncheon. I've got it 'most put up."
He glanced back over his shoulder, and spoke curtly:
"I don't want it. I'm goin' over on the knoll."
Her heart fell. The day was done. She would have to stay and get his
dinner. Even an hour's vagabondage would be impossible, for the knoll
was across the road overlooking the house and he would see her go. All
these weeks she had held herself to a strict routine, so that every
minute could be accounted for. This day only she had meant to break her
habit and run. It was over then. She was bitterly disappointed, as if
this, she thought, smiling a little to herself, was the only day there
was. She might as well wash blankets. She went to the bedroom to slip
off her dress and put on a thick short-sleeved apron: for Tira was not
of those delicate-handed housewives who can wash without splashing. She
dripped, in the process, as if, Tenney used to tell her in the first
days of their marriage, she got in all over. In her bedroom, with the
sweet air on her bare arms and the robins calling and the general tumult
and busy ecstasy outside, she stopped to wonder. Could she take the baby
and slip out by the side door, and come back in time to fry Tenney's ham
for dinner? No, it wouldn't do. He would be in for a drink, or the cow
shut up in the barn with her calf would "loo" and he would wonder if
anything was happening to them. A dozen things might come up to call him
back. She would wash blankets. Then she saw the baby, through the
doorway, sitting where she had put him, on the kitchen rug, and a quick
anger for him possessed her.
"In that hot kitchen," she said aloud, "when there's all outdoors!"
She dragged one of the blankets from the bed, ran out as she was,
bare-armed, bare-necked, and spread it on the grass in front of the
house.
"It's goin' to be washed anyways," she placated the housewifely instinct
within her, and she ran in for the baby and set him on the blanket. One
heart-breaking thing about this baby who was "not right" was that there
were no answers in him. She had tried all the wiles of motherhood to
show him how she loved him, and coax him to respond, not so much in
actual sentience to her as a baby's rejoinder to the world he could see
and touch. He had no answers. But this morning when the sun fell warmly
on him and the breeze stirred his coppery hair, he did, it seemed, hear
for an instant the voice of earth. He put out his fat hands and gurgled
into a laugh. Tira went mad. She was immediately possessed by an
overwhelming desire to hear him laugh again. She called to him, in
little cooing shouts, she stretched out her arms to him, and then, when
he would not be persuaded even to turn his head to her, she began to
dance. Perhaps after the first step she really forgot about him. Perhaps
the mother ecstasy ran into the ecstasy of spring. Perhaps, since she
could not answer the lure of the woods by running to them that morning,
the woods ran to her, the green magic of them, and threw their spell on
her. She hardly saw what was about her, even the child. The cherry tree
in bloom was a great whiteness at her right, the sun was a splendor, the
breeze stirred her hair, and the child's head was a coppery ball she
fixed her eyes upon. And while she waved her arms and danced, Martin,
who had seen her from the road, and left his horse there, was coming
toward her across the grass. Why could she not have seen him stop? Why
was he nothing more than a tree trunk in the woods, standing there while
she flung up her white arms and danced? The earth spirits may know. Pan
might know. They had got Tira that day, released from her winter's
chill. She did not, and still less Martin, his own blood rising with
every pulse.
"Hooray!" he yelled. "That's the talk."
He made a stride and Tira darted back. But it was not she he ran toward.
It was the child. He bent to the baby, caught him up and tossed him
knowingly and the baby, again incredibly, laughed. Tira, taken aback at
the sight of Martin, like a sudden cloud on her day, was arrested, in
her first rush toward him, by the pretty laugh. Her baby in Martin's
hands: that was calamity unspeakable. But the child had laughed. She
would hardly have known what price she would refuse even to the most
desperate of evil spirits that could conjure up that laugh. She stood
there breathless waiting on the moment, afraid of the event yet not
daring to interrupt it, and Martin tossed the baby and the baby laughed
again, as if it were "right." For Martin himself, except as the
instrument of the miracle, she had hardly a thought. It might have been
a hand out of heaven that had caught up the child, a hand from hell. But
the child laughed. Martin, for the interval, was neither malevolent nor
calculating. This was not one of his impish pleasantries. It might have
been in the beginning, but he was enormously flattered at having touched
the spring of that gurgling delight. For this was, he knew, a solemn
baby. He had glanced at it, when he came Tira's way, but only carelessly
and with no idea it was not like all babies. He supposed they began to
take notice sometime, when they got good and ready. Queer little devils!
But he was as vain and eager in his enjoyment of the response to his own
charm as he was prodigal in using it. The spring day had got into his
blood, too, and when he saw Tira dancing, the baby a part of the bright
picture, he had taken the little devil up, with no purpose but somehow
because it seemed natural, and when the child laughed he knew he had
made a hit and kept on, singing now, not a cradle song but a man's song,
something he had not himself thought of since he heard his old
grandmother drone it between smokes, while she sat by the fire and
dreamed of times past. It was something about Malbrook--"gone to the
army"--"hope he never'll come back." And there was Tira now, within the
circle of his fascination, bending a little toward him, her eyes darker
than he had seen them for many a day, her white arms wide, as if she
invited him. He wondered how a woman with her black hair could have a
skin so white; but he never guessed the lovely arms were stretched
toward the child and not to him, and that they would have snatched the
baby but for that amazing laugh. He stopped, breathless more from his
thoughts than his gay exertion, and gave a shout.
"Here!" he cried, to Tira, in a joviality of finding her at one with him
and the day (this first prime day of spring, a day that ought to make a
person shake a leg), "you take him. Fine little chap! Set him on the
ground ag'in an' you an' me'll have a tell."
Tira took the step toward him and lifted her arms for the child. She was
glad the wild game had ended. Martin put the baby into her arms, but
instantly she felt his hands on her elbows, holding her.
"Guess that's the way to git you, ain't it?" he inquired, in jovial good
humor. "You can't scratch with the youngster between us. You can't cut
an' run. By thunder, Tira! you're as handsome as you were that day I see
you first an' followed you home? Remember? You're like"--his quick mind
saw it at a leap--"you're like this cherry tree, all a-bloom."
He bent his head to her arm, almost as white as the cherry bloom and
kissed it. A shadow dropped upon them. It was only a little sailing
cloud but it startled Tira more than the kiss; the look of the day had
changed so suddenly and as if it were changing for them alone. For there
outside was the bright affluence of spring just as it had been but over
them the warning cloud. She glanced about, in the one instant of
darkening, and on the knoll across the road saw what the kind little
cloud might have been sent to tell her. Tenney stood there, a stark
figure, watching them. Her numbness to the presence of Martin who stood
holding her broke in a throb of fear. The instant before, his lips on
her arm had been no more than the touch of a leaf that might have blown
there. She did not even remember it. She lifted her face to his and,
seeing the fear in it, he involuntarily released her and she stepped
away from him.
"You go," she said. "Go quick. He's over there on the knoll. My God!
don't look. Don't you know no better'n to look? He's fencin'. He's got
his axe."
But Martin had looked. He gave a little disconcerted laugh and turned
away.
"So long!" he called back over his shoulder. "Glad the little chap took
to me. Have him out here an' whenever I'm goin' by----"
She did not hear. She had run, as if from nearing danger, into the house
and closed the door behind her. It was warmer even in the few minutes
since she had come out, but she had lost her delight in the open. She
was afraid, and as Martin stepped into his wagon, he wondered why. Tira
was a good, strong, husky girl, a streak of the gypsy in her. Sometimes
in the old days he'd been half afraid of her himself when things didn't
suit, mostly after he got carrying on with some other girl. The way her
eyes opened on a chap! Why didn't she open 'em that way on Tenney? Queer
proposition, a woman was, anyways.
Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window,
still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her
and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes
on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood
there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to
the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost
him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the
child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not
heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for
him on earth: his mother's arms.
All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the
window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the
sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she
to get dinner? Or was she to assume that this day marked the settlement
of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder,
told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper,
could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to
through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more
horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last
inevitable settlement? And what would the settlement be? What was
there--she thought over the enemies she had feared. The crutch: that was
gone. She had made sure of that. The gun: but if it were here she
doubted whether Tenney would dare even look at it again, remembering
that night when he washed at the invisible stain on his hands. A quarter
of an hour had gone in these imaginings, and then she did get up, went
into the kitchen, built her fire, and set the table. But as she moved
about the room, she carried the baby with her, working awkwardly against
his weight and putting him down for a minute only at a time and
snatching him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just
outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond
robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to
break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the
child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if
the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt like laughing at her.
Tenney was there, at a few minutes after twelve, but dinner was not on
time. He came in, washed his hands at the sink and glanced about him.
The table was set, and Tira, at the stove, the child on her hip, was
trying the potatoes. She did not look at him. If he looked strange, it
seemed to her she might not be able to go on.
"I ain't dished up," she said. "I'm kinder late."
Tenney spoke immediately and his voice sounded merely quiet, not, she
reasoned anxiously, as if he tried to make it so, but just--quiet.
"You ain't washed the breakfast dishes neither. Ain't you feelin' well?"
"Yes," said Tira, "well as common. I left 'em, that's all."
"Oh," said Tenney. "Wanted to git at suthin' else."
She turned and looked at him. Yes, he was different, not paler, nor, as
she had seen him, aflame in a livid way, but different.
"Isr'el," she said, "I never knew 'Gene Martin was goin' to stop here. I
knew no more'n the dead."
"Was that him?" asked Tenney indifferently. "I see somebody stopped. I
thought mebbe 'twas the butcher. Then I remembered he comes of a
Wednesday."
That settled it in her mind. The weekly call of the butcher was as fixed
as church on Sunday. Tenney was playing for something, and she
understood. The moment had come. The house and she both knew it. She was
not sorry, and perhaps, though she had been good to it and kept it in
faithful order, the house was not sorry either. Perhaps it would rather
rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here
alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with
the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence
that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law.
He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did
not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind.
Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning--three together in May
sunshine--had confirmed his ugly doubts, he was relieved to wash his
hands of them both. The phrase came into her mind, and that in itself
startled her more than any fear of him. Wash his hands! How pitiful he
had been that night he washed his hands!
They sat down to dinner together, and though Tira could not eat, she
made pretense of being too busy, getting up from the table for this and
that, and brewing herself a cup of tea. Tenney had coffee left over from
breakfast, and when her tea was done she drank it hastily, standing at
the sink where she could spill a part of it unnoticed. And when dinner
was over he went peaceably away to the knoll again, and she hastily set
the house in order while the baby slept.
When Tenney came home he was quite the same, silent but unmoved, and
after milking he took off his boots by the stove and seemed to doze,
while Tira strained the milk and washed her dishes. She was still sure
that she and the child were to go. When would it be? Would the warning
come quickly? She wanted to leave the waiting house in order, the house
that seemed to know so much more about it all than she did. The fire had
gone down in the stove, but though the night was warm, Tenney still sat
by the hearth, huddled now in his chair, as if he wanted the comforting
of that special spot: the idea of the hearthstone, the beneficence of
man's cooking place. Tira's mind was on the night, the warmth of it, the
moist cool breath bringing the hylas' peeping. It made her melancholy as
spring nights always had, even when she was most happy. She thought of
the willows feathering out on the road to her old home, and how the
sight of them against the sky, that and the distant frogs, made her
throat thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the
one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look
at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her
heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since
she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the
other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get
work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and capable could
not get work.
Tenney stirred in his chair, roused himself from his huddled posture and
got up. Was he going to tell her now?
"I guess mebbe I'll poke off to bed," he said, in his commonplace manner
of that noon. "I've got to be up bright an' early."
"Ain't you finished on the knoll?" she ventured.
"Yes, or next to it. But I've got quite a number o' jobs to do round
home."
He went up the stairs without a light, carrying his shoes in his hand,
and Tira shivered once, thinking how horrible it was to go so softly in
stockinged feet. She was not afraid of him. Only she did wish his feet
would sound. She did not sleep that night. She brought in the cradle,
put the baby in it, and drew it to the window and there she sat beside
it, the night through, her hand on the broken hood. She had chosen a
high, straight chair, so that she might be too uncomfortable to sleep,
but she had no temptation to drop off. All her nerves were taut, her
senses broad awake. She was ready, she knew, for anything. The night was
peaceful, thrilled by little sounds of stirring life, and the house,
whatever it guessed, had forgotten all about her. Toward three o'clock
she suddenly lost her sense of vitality. She was cold, and so sleepy now
that the thought of bed was an ache of longing. She got up, found
herself stiff and heavy-footed, lifted the child from his cradle and
went into the bedroom with him. There she put him inside the sheets, and
lay down beside him on the outside of the bed. She slept at once, but
almost at once she was recalled. Tenney was standing in the bedroom
door, looking at her.
"Wake up," he was saying, not unkindly. "Wake up."
She came drowsily awake, but before she was fully herself her feet were
on the floor and she was rubbing her heavy eyes. The sun was streaming
in.
"I've blazed the fire an' het me up some coffee," he said, still in that
impersonal way which was so disturbing only because it was not his way.
"I've harnessed up. I'm goin' to the street. You remember where that
Brahma stole her nest? I've got to have two eggs for even dozens."
"Up in the high mow," said Tira. "Right under the beam."
She heard him go out through the shed, and she followed, to the kitchen,
slowly, with the squalid feeling that comes of sleeping in one's day
clothes, and there she found the fire low and his cup and plate on the
bare table. She could see him through the window. There was the horse,
hitched to the staple in the corner of the barn, there was the basket of
eggs on the ground waiting for its even dozens.
"D'you find any?" she called.
He did not answer, and she ran out to the barn and called up to the mow:
"You there? You find any?"
But the barn, in its soft darkness, with a beam of dusty light here and
there, knew nothing about him. He had not climbed to the mow, for the
ladder was on the other side of the barn floor. She lifted it, brought
it over, set it against the hay and climbed. She was broad awake now,
and her taut muscles obeyed and liked it. She stepped on the hay, found
the dark hole old Brahma chose for her secret hoarding place, and put in
her hand, once, twice. Three eggs! Brahma must have thought she was
pretty smart to lay three without having them stolen away from her. Tira
put the eggs carefully in her apron pocket and hurried down the ladder,
and out to the basket waiting on the ground. How many eggs did he want
to make even dozens? Did he tell her? She could not remember. Probably
he had forgotten himself, by now. She sat down on the step and took the
eggs out in her lap, and then began to count and put them back again.
The sun lay on them and they looked pretty to her in their brown
fairness. She liked them, she thought, as she counted, liked all the
farm things, the touch of them, the smell. Even old Charlie, standing
there, smelled of the barn, and that was good, too. Five dozen, that was
it, and one over. She put the extra egg in her pocket, got up and
carried the basket to the wagon, placing it in front where it could sit
safely between Tenney's feet. And at that minute Tenney himself came
round the corner from the front of the house, and the day was so kind
and the sun so warm on her face that it seemed a long time ago she had
thought he meant to send her away, and she called to him:
"You might git a quarter o' tea, the kind they call English breakfast.
An' a half a dozen lemons. It's terrible hard to think up any kind of a
pie these days, 'twixt hay an' grass."
"Tea," said Tenney, as if he were putting it down in his mind. "An'
lemons. You might go out, in a half an hour or so, an' look at that
calf."
He stepped into the wagon, took up the reins and drove away. Tira
watched him out of the yard, and at last she had no suspicion of his
coming back, as he had done so often, to surprise her. He was
somehow--different. He was really gone. She went in, got her breakfast
and ate it, this with more appetite than she had had for many weeks, and
smiled at herself, thinking she was not sleepy yet, but when sleep came
on her it would come like a cloud and smother her. She moved fast about
the kitchen to get her work done before it came, and in perhaps an hour
she remembered Tenney's telling her to have an eye to the calf. She
smiled a little, grateful for even the tiniest impulse to smile, and
told herself she wouldn't go out to look after any calf until she had
looked at somebody else who ought to be awake. She went into the
bedroom, and stopped a choked instant at the strangeness of the bed. The
little coppery head was what she should have seen, but there was only
the straight expanse of quilt, and a pillow, disarranged, lying
crookedly near the top. She snatched up the pillow. There was the little
coppery head. The baby was lying on his back, and over his face,
carefully folded into a square, was her apron, the one Eugene Martin had
torn away from her. The baby was dead.